The typical day for a DePauw student: wake up, go to classes, work, attend clubs/seminars/extracurriculars, maybe get exercise, study, spend time with friends, study more and sleep. We stay busy. Our days and weeks are split into hourly time grids that we follow religiously-just check your schedule on e-services. From the moment our alarm clocks sound, we're thinking about our agenda and planning out our day. On this campus, our time is always managed. And whether we use it efficiently or not, we always have something extra to keep us going.
Coffee with a double shot of espresso, energy drinks, ibuprofen, Adderall, even pre-workout. Most of us don't go a day or even a few hours without an upper to keep us attentive and able to get everything done. And before bed: melatonin.
I wouldn't say that these things are necessarily bad; some of them are beneficial to the body. But they each fit the definition of a drug: "a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body" (Oxford Dictionaries).
Every "something extra" we need is readily available and legal. We can buy it or get it prescribed with little to no effort. It would almost be stupid not to use our resources in order to get ahead, to use our time more efficiently.
However, it seems more and more like an unnatural cycle that we willingly put ourselves through. It doesn't seem healthy to rely on substances to get through the day, and I use the word "substances" judiciously. Most people don't call coffee or Monster a substance. But it's easy to say that until trying to go without them. Caffeinated drinks are only on the soft side of "substances."
We could easily say it's not our fault. We are the twenty-somethings of 2014 living in a time characterized by technological and social progression. Information and new ideas are shared at the snap of a finger, and no one wants to be left behind. We're used to the fast life, and we're well on our way to the real world-the workforce. We can't slow down, much less stop.
The circumstances may be against us. Maybe our workload is too much. Maybe too much is asked of us. Maybe we try to do more things than we can manage. Or maybe the side effects are too meager to even call it a problem. The first step to finding an answer is acknowledging our heavy use of that something extra.
Is it farfetched to think we can get everything done in a day running on food and water?
-Pitts is a sophomore English writing major from Indianapolis, Ind.